Why do we love Simone?

Simone de Beauvoir is a study in irony—a woman famous for her lifelong devotion to a man with whom she had a very difficult and tempestuous relationship, who inspired multitudes of women to rebel against such strict roles. As a philosophy student, teacher, and lover, de Beauvoir's impact on the development and dissemination of the existentialist philosophy is immeasurable. Born to fairly well-off parents in Paris, de Beauvoir received an excellent education and made the most of it. While many people know of her only as the consort to the king of modern existentialists, Jean-Paul Sartre, whom she met at the Sorbonne in 1929, she was a prolific author, philosopher, and teacher, whose autobiographies and semi-autobiographical novels provide insight into the life of women in France in the mid-20th century, intimate portraits of Sartre and their relationship of intense love and common betrayal, and helped map a new philosophy of feminism. Her most influential book, The Second Sex (1949, published in English in 1953) was an astonishing statement, in academic philosophical terms, that women were needlessly marginalized by a world that assumed all things male to be "normal" and all things not-male an aberration. De Beauvoir went on to write about abortion rights, defense of the aging, as well as memoirs of her mother's death and her life with her famous lover. Despite her over-50-year relationship with Sartre, they never married, nor did they live together. After his death, she moved across the street from the cemetery where he was buried so she could visit him often.

Biography:

Born - January 9, 1908
Paris, France
Died - April 14, 1986
Paris, France

Bibliography:

• She Came to Stay (1943)
• The Blood of Others (1944)
• Tous les Hommes sont mortels (1946)
• The Second Sex (1949)
• The Mandarins (1954)
• La Longue Marche (1957)
• Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958)
• The Prime of Life (1960)
• The Force of Circumstance (1963)
• A Very Easy Death (1964)
• La Femme rompue (1964)
• The Coming of Age (1970)
• All Said and Done (1972)
• Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre (1981)